LIKE THIS:The day after feeling super accomplished about my writing, where I was on top of the world with some great news, I went to a writers group where I’d submitted a story I knew needed a lot of work. It was good. Everyone's critique was helpful, with their comments purposeful and and directed at all the story's problems.

Even though the critique was great and exactly what I was looking for, I left with that King of the Mountain feeling from yesterday gone. I'd written a shitty story. A bad story. An awful story. I wasn't on top of the world anymore, I was back to being just me, trying very hard to take a half-baked slurry of ideas to the world and serve it up as stew.

After group, I stopped at my favorite coffee shop for the restroom and an iced latte, and then walked the last two miles home with my fly down.

Failure doesn’t discriminate by how it humiliates you.

That all said, for me, failure isn’t the end of the line. In the case of my story, yeah, it’s a mess. Yeah it needs a lot of work. Yeah, I did so much research and included too many ideas and now there's so much going on there's nothing going on. It needs a firm structure and characters to peg it to the ground and leave it squirming there in agony, and then people will stay to look at it. If I hadn't known that, though, I wouldn't have any idea where to get started in editing. In this way, what you may see as failure, I see as practice.

If I were to give up in this situation, this story idea I love so much would be reluctantly dragged to that corner of my hard drive where bad ideas go to die. But I really love this story. I believe in this story. I feel like with the right amount of kneading and punching, this story’s conglomeration of way too many ideas can be cooked into what I want. (Insert your own baking analogy, I’m out).

So, I’m taking my own advice. The same simple stuff I used to dole out when I was a therapist. Clients would often be tearing their hair out after metaphorically banging their head against a rock, hoping for something other than a concussion. And, as their therapist, I would tell them gently (sometimes more than once) to try something different, and then quote everyone's favorite definition of insanity, for laughs.

NOT FAILURE, PRACTICE:This time, rather than writing this thing over and over again hoping for a different result, like I have been doing, I’m going back to square one. I’m going to review my favorite book on writing. Starting with the chapters on beginnings and endings. Then the chapter on structure. And then finally the chapter on plot.

After that, I’ll go analog. I've hammered out everything so far about this story on my laptop or my phone. Not this time. Pen and paper, baby. I'll write outlines in a Field Notes notebook, do blocking on graph paper, keep everything I have on it away from all notions of what it was before. It's like rebooting, but with tree guts.

Basically, I'm removing contextual cues. By taking away all objects I associate with what the story is now, I am forcing myself to reframe my conception of the story. When we look at something we love and have failed at and want desperately to succeed, this is one tactic where we can make it work: remove all familiar aspects of what it was, and then turn it into what it needs to become.

It's worked in AA for years.

Failure can only be conquered by doing -- by reading, experiencing, and learning, among other things. And then by applying what we have learned with what we already know. If we let our failures beat us by not turning them into practice, we let failure win by not learning from it, and possibly not improving. If we turn it into practice, we can see how it can feed us and turn us into better workers, and into better people.

Some people wind up with their souls weighted down by their failures, and others are lifted up by the experience. What is different about these people, besides the lifted-up guys being 100% annoying? Well, the lifted-up guys have learned to make their failure work for them. They've learned how their failure made them better people, and actually enriched their lives.

Bullshit, right? No.

Try this on for size. In 2008, when I was working at a residential center for teens, a client tried to shove a pencil through my eye during a psychotic break. I fought her off for ten minutes in a hallway with the help of my case manager, before a janitor saved my life. Then I had to deal with over a week of the facility trying to blame me for the interaction, despite that they had it on camera. I eventually left, and the facility enacted a total-staff turnover.

This was a failure because there were specific warning signs I did not see, and specific protocols I did not follow which kept me at the facility a week after I turned in my resignation.

What happened to me? I got PTSD. But I got over it, thanks to a wonderful therapist and a great friend. What happened to the client? No idea. But I've moved on. I hope she has, too.

Even two years after the incident, I was looking to learn from it:

I learned how to handle myself in a crisis situation.

I learned how to recover from trauma.

I learned how to stay calm in the face of violence.

I learned how to protect myself.

I learned how to stand up for myself in an adversarial and toxic work environment (very helpful).

And now, eight years later, as a writer, I have a lot of material I can grab from those terrifying ten minutes to use whenever I need them.

How can you learn to recover from failure (epic or regular-old)? There's a couple ways, and I'll cover them in a few blog posts. We’re going to look at strengths, rather than the specific events leading up to or during the failure itself. We’re going to look at resources, and draw on those. And we’re going to look at outlets where you can turn the failure into success in future endeavors.

Today: StrengthsEveryone is good at something. Some of these things aren’t tangible. Like passion. You're a passionate person, and you throw yourself into everything - your work, your friendships, your hobbies. That is a strength. When we’re looking at strengths, we’re looking more at character strengths, rather than “I’m good at basketball!” Sure, you can slam dunk, but unless you’re failing at soccer, it’s not gonna to help you win at sports. How do you find out what your strengths are? Look for things people say about you or have said about you.

If people say you’re smart, use those smarts to consider the merits and flaws of your failure. In my situation, I was able to apply my knowledge of psychotic breaks to the client. I was also able to weigh the way the facility was treating me to the logic of the situation. Because I was able to apply knowledge and "smarts" to the situation, I was later able to learn from it.

For a passionate person, use that passion to keep moving forward after failure has occurred. I was passionate about social work, even after my failure. I re-examined my desire to go back into social work after such a traumatic experience, and then made safety one of my prime concerns for both my clients and myself.

If you’re smart and passionate, you can consider the ins and outs of your failure and how you can power through them into the next success. But there’s other strengths that lead failure into success as well. Are you considerate and funny? You can turn your failure into a teaching moment for others. Are you kind and resilient? Turn that kindness inward and nurture yourself, and then draw from that resilience to move into the next thing life brings. If you have a take-no-prisoners, goal-oriented attitude that has always brought you success, turn that failure into something to step over, and march to the next goal.

Remember:You are not the sum of things you’ve not done, failed at, or left incomplete. You are also the sum of your strengths, everything that makes you shine. That is why people love you and flock to you - your humor, your kindness, your passion, your skill on the CasioTone. So when you’re down, they can help lift you up and carry you through to the next great endeavor.

But I’m getting ahead of myself … we’ll talk about resources in the next failure post.